Antibiody-facilitated digestion and its implications for infant nutrition.

A model of digestion is proposed in which oligopeptides arriving at the small bowel epithelium are bound to secretory antibodies, which hold them in contact with proteases and thus facilitate their breakdown and utilization. "Immunity" and "digestion" are thus seen as two sides of the same coin. Absence of this pathway, predictably, would cause a degree of malabsorption, while partial deficiency (either quantitative or qualitative) would give rise to a coeliac-like illness. Breast-feeding with colostrum and then milk provides the infant gut with both immunity and "digestivity", and this could be adopted therapeutically for coeliac disease and other consequences of local immunodeficiency.